U.S. scientists said on Thursday they had tracked down another gene involved in several different cancers, which seems to become active just before a tumor begins to spread.
They hope the gene, called PIK3CA, might be a good “marker” for diagnosing cancer, or a target for new cancer drugs.
The gene was found by a team that included some of the country’s leading experts in the genetics of cancer at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.
Led by Dr. Victor Velculescu, the researchers found PIK3CA mutations in 74 of 234 colon cancer patients, or 32 percent of them. Mutations in the gene were found in 27 percent of patients with brain tumors known as glioblastomas, 25 percent of stomach cancer patients and 8 percent of breast cancer patients.
They found 92 mutations in all.
“The sheer number of mutations observed in this gene strongly suggests that they are functionally important,” the researchers wrote in their report, published in this week’s issue of the journal Science.
The mutations seem to come about late in tumor development, just as a benign tumor becomes invasive cancer, they said.
Many different cancer genes have been found, from the p53 gene found in dozens of cancers to the BRCA genes linked with breast and ovarian cancer.
Experts note cancer is a complex disease, caused by the interaction of possibly hundreds of genes and the environment.
